UP: IAS officer facing molestation charge gets bail

Lucknow: A local court on Thursday granted bail to senior IAS officer Shashi Bhushan Lal Sushil, who was arrested for allegedly molesting a Delhi-based woman in a train.

Sessions Judge KK Sharma granted bail to Shushil and ordered his release on furnishing two securities of Rs 20,000 each and a personal bond of the same amount.

Considering that I am unable to understand that in a moving train when the destination was 35 kilometres away from the place where the alleged offence of attempt to rape took place, how a person of the status of an IAS would make an attempt to outrage modesty where fellow passengers were also travelling, the judge said.

Shushil, a 2001 batch IAS officer, was arrested on October 2 and a case under section 354 of the IPC (assault or criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty) was lodged against him following a complaint by the woman, a senior IT executive, Government Railway Police (GRP)officials had said.

The woman had alleged in the FIR that the officer travelling with her in Lucknow Mail from Delhi to Lucknow had misbehaved with her on the night of October 1, they said.

The IAS officer had boarded the train at Ghaziabad and was allotted Berth 15 of the 2nd AC coach, while the girl and her mother had boarded the train in New Delhi and were in berths 13 and 14.

Refuting the molestation charge, the officer claimed that he had got into a verbal duel with the woman after she made a casteist remark against him.